The Fabulous Beast Page 17

  ‘Will you go back to Dan, once all this is over?’ I asked Jenny. We were sleeping together now.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She seemed genuinely upset by having to make the choice at that time. ‘I really don’t know. I am his wife.’

  ‘But you’re with me now.’

  ‘Yes, but I am his wife. Things are a bit strange at the moment. With the plague around. You do things you wouldn’t normally do. Like a war. People think they’re going to die tomorrow, so why not grab a little pleasure today. And he might get over this addiction, you know? Once he runs out of fuel, he’ll have to cold turkey, won’t he? I think he’ll break the habit, once that happens.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  ‘I have to give him the chance, Clark. You – you wouldn’t do anything, would you? You wouldn’t hurt him in any way?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Jealousy?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ I replied, angry with her, with him, with the whole world.

  That night – it had to be that night, didn’t it, with this conversation still fresh in her mind – that night there was a prowler in the boat yard. I took Burt’s rifle and went out on the jetty.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  There were no lights on around the yard, since the power had failed. I had a flashlight but the batteries were low and weak. I shone the dim light around me and saw that the diesel pump lock had been broken. The nozzle was lying on the jetty, still oozing some diesel. Someone was on the end of the jetty, walking quickly towards town. I could see a dim figure carrying something in one hand.

  ‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘I have orders to shoot.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ came the reply.

  Burt was shooting looters now. It had become too serious. He had ordered me to do the same. I raised the rifle and aimed.

  ‘I’m warning you. You have to stop.’

  There was no answer this time. Just the sound of running feet on the boards. I was shaking. Burt had distinctly told me not to physically engage looters. He had already lost one of his men, stabbed by a looter who pretended to give himself up. ‘Warn them three times, then shoot,’ he told me. The next moment I fired into the darkness. I did it without thinking. My finger seemed to squeeze the trigger before my mind told it to.

  There followed the thump of a body hitting the boards, then the skidding sound of a heavy object sliding along the end of the jetty. With my heart thumping wildly, I ran to inspect what I had done. I was horrified to find Dan Strickman lying there, bleeding, a bullet hole in his chest. A can of diesel was leaking from a broken cap, running through the cracks in the boards and drizzling on the surface of the water beneath.

  He looked up at me, and said, ‘I’ll be all right, in a minute. Boy, that was some . . .’

  Poor Dan. He was dead before the minute was out. In his wild state he had confused being fireproof with being immortal. He was no more bullet proof than the next man. His metabolism had found a way of dealing with burns, eradicating them, nullifying them – something. But he was still vulnerable, still able to be knocked down by a speeding car, crushed by falling wall – or killed by a bullet from a gun.

  ‘You did it on purpose,’ Jenny said, later. ‘You knew it was Dan – that’s why you killed him.’

  ‘Is that true, Clark?’ asked Burt. ‘Is that true what she says? Did you give him three warnings?’

  ‘Two. I didn’t have time for the third.’

  ‘I said three Clark. The law requires three warnings. Otherwise I have to treat it as an illegal killing. Shit, just tell me you warned him three times, that’s all I want to hear.’

  ‘He killed him out of jealousy, because he wanted me forever,’ Jenny said, stubbornly. ‘I know it. I can feel it.’

  ‘You couldn’t feel a marline spike if I jammed it in your eye,’ I yelled at her. ‘You’re incapable of feeling anything.’

  ‘All right, that’s enough. I’ve got too much on now, but I’ll get back to this later, Clark. In the meantime you better let me have the rifle back, before you do any more damage.’

  ‘Any more damage? Fuck you, Burt, I never wanted it in the first place. I’m not trained for this. You’re the one who told me to shoot people. I shouldn’t have been given a weapon. I shouldn’t have had the responsibility. I haven’t fired a gun in my life before now. You tell me to shoot looters, then you call me a fucking murderer. That’s not right.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get back to it later.’

  But he never did. Burt died of the White Death before it finally left town in the Spring. Jenny went away. When the police interviewed her, she said she wasn’t there, at the shooting, and didn’t know anything about it. There were no witnesses. I changed my story. I told them I yelled at the intruder three times, then fired. They let me go.

  In the meantime, Dan had the last laugh on everyone. He was having the time of his life, down there in the fires of Hell. There was a law in force, during the plague year, that anyone who died had to be cremated, to kill any dormant bacteria I imagine. So Dan was burned, and burned again, and burned yet again, each time his corpse grotesquely reappearing from its own ashes, rising as it were like that fabled bird, the Phoenix. We couldn’t get shot of him. He just wouldn’t go away, damn his re–emerging hide. He became the joke of the town. Even I had to laugh. In the end they tied him to the back of a boat, dragged him out into the ocean, and threw down ground bait to attract the sharks.

  Those bastards soon got rid of him.

  Gifts

  Twas the night before Christmas.

  8 o’clock.

  I stood beside a long and lonely road somewhere between Belfast and Portrush desperate for a lift. My feet were sore and my body chilled by a sharp wind. There were deep drifts of snow which hampered me. It was not the best time of year to be hitching a lift.

  When I was not thumbing I had time to look up at the night sky. It was encrusted with stars. A beautiful Christmas Eve. Were I heading for a toddy and a warm fire I might have appreciated those stars.

  Another lorry sped by and splashed my legs with slush. The white snow on the edge of the highway had turned to brown mush. There were puddles everywhere. I’m not a great one for white Christmases. Not when I’m trudging through the dark night carrying luggage.

  A van this time. I think the driver gave me a glance. But he was in a hurry. The wife and kids were waiting, no doubt. It was Christmas Eve after all. There were presents to wrap. Drinks to drink. Maybe the last few decorations to put up. He was in a hurry. I didn’t blame him.

  Several more cars in a sort of convoy.

  Three lorries.

  Ah, a motorcyclist.

  I’m glad he didn’t stop. I would have felt obliged to accept and I wasn’t dressed for it. I would’ve frozen to death.

  Nothing then, for a long while.

  I began to think I stood just as much chance of hitching a lift from Santa, on his way to deliver the gifts.

  Then suddenly, a miracle. On a yellow distant stretch of the highway a set of lights appeared. For some reason hope sprang to my heart. I immediately had a feeling, deep inside, that this was the one. This was my lift.

  When it drew nearer however, that feeling dissipated. It was a stretch limousine. A white stretch limo. Fat chance of that stopping. Some celebrity or politician, on his way to . . .

  Good God! It was slowing down.

  It was stopping.

  Maybe the driver was lost? Maybe wanted to ask the way? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. It was a long, long vehicle. Plenty of room inside.

  The smoked-glass side window slid down.

  A black face smiled into mine.

  ‘Need a lift?’ A soft Welsh accent.

  ‘Do I? Yes, please. Portrush?’

  ‘We’ll take you as far as we can.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ I had visions of a small bar inside that limo. A nice warming whiskey. A convivial atmosphere. A chat.

  The driver got out and went to the boot, opening it. He was a tall well-built ma
n and later I was to think of him having regal bearing. He took my case and stowed it in the vast boot alongside three other pieces of luggage.

  I opened one of the passenger doors and climbed in.

  Looking round I saw two other occupants, both men. Like the driver they were middle-aged. Under the courtesy light I noted that one of them may have been of Asian origin, the other possibly European. They both smiled and nodded. Then the light went out and we were all one and the same. I wondered if there was an international conference on somewhere. Then one man spoke to the other in a Liverpool accent and the reply came back, I guessed, in a Northern Irish brogue.

  Wrong again.

  The driver spoke to me, peering at me via his rear view mirror.

  ‘Going home for Christmas?’

  ‘Me? No – visiting a college friend in Portrush. We’re – ah – I’m studying farming at college. My dad’s a farmer. Livestock. I’m following him into the business.’

  ‘A good old-fashioned business,’ said the driver. ‘Nice to see someone following the old ways.’

  The other two passengers murmured approvingly.

  ‘How about you three?’ I asked, emboldened by their interest in me. ‘Where are you off to in this magnificent chariot?’

  ‘This?’ laughed the driver, glancing around him. ‘This isn’t magnificent. It’s a piece of inanimate machinery. Something has to be live to be magnificent. A horse is magnificent. Blood and bone, pulsing beneath your thighs. Something with fire and spirit. A honey-coloured stallion with a golden mane and golden tail, with muscles of iron. That’s magnificent for you . . .’

  ‘A camel even,’ interrupted the man next to me. ‘A good sturdy camel.’

  ’Or an ass,’ said the third man, adding almost apologetically. ‘A well-trained ass, of course.’

  They all nodded in agreement with one another, the driver saying, ‘You should know that, being a shepherd’s son.’

  I corrected him. ‘Well, livestock. We do have one or two sheep, but it’s mostly cattle.’

  Fine, I said to myself mentally, we don’t like machines but we ride in the best of them. I persevered with my question.

  ‘You didn’t say where you were going.’

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ answered the driver. ‘Fact is, it’s a reunion.’

  ‘Oh.’ Thoughts of the international conference returned. ‘You’re getting together with colleagues for Christmas?’

  ‘We are already together. There’s just the three of us,’ said the driver. ‘Mr King there,’ he indicated the one next to me, ‘first name Baz. Mr Casey Righ, next to you. R-i-g-h. And I’m Mel Brenin.’ He reached over his shoulder with his right hand and I shook it. The other two offered their hands as the driver continued talking, ‘We meet every millennium, somewhere in the world. We’re usually not far away from each other. Our past experience, our history, bonds us together.’

  Bright lights came towards us and a truck zoomed past through the slush.

  I considered what he’d just said and my thoughts braked sharply.

  ‘Did I hear that right? You didn’t just say millennium?’

  ‘Yep.’ The driver smiled at me in the rear view mirror. ‘Once every thousand years. This is our second reunion. Eh, boys?’

  The other two grinned at me.

  I was slightly annoyed. ‘OK. This is a joke, right? You’re taking me for a ride.’

  They exploded into laughter.

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll rephrase that – you’re having me on. Three men, one called King, one called Righ – I have enough Gaelic to know that means chieftain, or king if you like – and I’m betting the third name, Brenin, is either Erse or Welsh for “ruler”. Three kings who prefer horses and camels to cars? Come on, guys. It’s really corny.’

  ‘He’s clever, this shepherd,’ said Baz. He turned to me. ‘Actually, Casey was the only king. I was an astrologer. Mel a philosopher. Two wise men and a king. You sure you weren’t there? Weren’t you the shepherd at the back with the big nose? I’ll bet that was you.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  I lapsed into sulky silence. No one likes to be the butt of a joke. These three were having fun at my expense. OK, I was getting a lift out of it, but just the same it rankled. But I knew though, that I mustn’t let them see it was getting to me. The best thing to do was to go along with the joke and try and turn it on them. Make them feel uncomfortable for starting the thing in the first place.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, brightly, ‘what do you guys think of Elliot? The Journey of the Magi? Did old Thomas Stearns get it right?’

  ‘He got one part wrong,’ said Mel, sounding aggrieved. ‘There wasn’t any sherbet.’

  ‘Nor silken girls to bring it,’ added Baz.

  They sounded so serious I almost applauded them.

  ‘So,’ I continued, ‘you all travelled from afar, following a bright light in the sky . . .’

  ‘A star,’ interrupted Casey. ‘It was a star.’

  ‘Like that one?’ I pointed through the windscreen at a moving winking light in the sky. ‘That traveller’s star.’

  ‘That’s an aircraft, you idiot,’ snapped Baz. ‘What do you take us for?’

  ‘Now, now,’ Mel said, gently. ‘The boy was only funning. Let’s keep the party polite, Baz.’

  Baz grunted.

  I tried another tack.

  ‘So, all right, you’re the Magi. You’re the three that carried the gifts.’

  ‘Gold, frankincense and myrrh,’ replied Casey, ‘every schoolchild knows that.’

  ‘So, what happened? Mary and Joseph sent you a Harrods’ gift list? For the Christening? And all that was left after the linen and cutlery was gold, frankincense and myrrh?’

  Baz opened his mouth again, but shut it again when Casey laid a gentle hand on his arm.

  ‘Somethin’ like that,’ agreed Casey. ‘Gold for a king, frankincense for a deity and myrrh . . .’

  ‘Embalming fluid for a man who was going to die,’ I finished for him. ‘Very good. You guys are good. You know your stuff.’

  Mel said, ‘So do you, by all accounts.’

  ‘It is just stuff,’ I said. ‘Every schoolboy knows it.’

  ‘Not these days,’ moaned Casey. ‘It’s a sad century.’

  ‘Every century has its woes,’ Baz said.

  We drove in silence for about an hour then and finally came to some crossroads in a village. There was something going on in the school hall as we drew up outside.

  ‘This is where we part company, young man,’ Mel said. ‘Would you like a drink with us before you go?’

  I was still feeling miffed. ‘If you guys are celebrating a reunion, it’s not really appropriate for me to join in, is it?’

  ‘We’re not proud, lad,’ Baz said. ‘Have a shot.’

  Mel said, ‘Orange juice for me, Baz – I’m driving.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ grumbled his friend.

  Eventually we all had our drinks in little silver tumblers not much bigger than thimbles.

  ‘Here’s to the next thousand years,’ cried Casey.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said throwing it back. ‘Who needs an inn when you’ve got a portable bar?’

  A nice burning feeling in my gullet.

  ‘So,’ I continued, somewhat mellowed, ‘how come you’re all still here? Shouldn’t you be dead?’

  Casey replied earnestly, ‘We brought gifts – and naturally got given one each in return. It’s an Eastern thing.’

  ‘And so you received . . .?’

  ‘Immortality.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That makes sense.’

  Mel shrugged, the eyes in his velvet face gleaming in the lights on an oncoming car. ‘It wasn’t as if we asked for it.’

  This was turning into quite an elaborate jest. I was feeling a lot better about it now. Something to tell the family when I got home.

  ‘One thing has always puzzled me,’ I said to the three of them. ‘The gold.’

  ‘Wh
at about the gold?’ asked Mel.

  ‘Well, frankincense and myrrh – they’re going to go, whatever happens. Be used up, or if not, evaporate eventually. But gold is solid stuff. And valuable. Extremely valuable. What happened to the gold? You don’t hear about it after the birth. Did Joseph and Mary carry it with them? Use it to finance the flight to Egypt to escape Herod? Heavy stuff, gold. You’d need a few asses and camels for that. And later, you don’t hear of the family being wealthy. Carpenters? Seems a bit funny to me, to work as carpenters with all that gold.’

  ‘It was a lot of gold,’ admitted Casey, thoughtfully. ‘When I carried it across country I needed a regiment with me, to protect it. You can’t cross foreign regions full of bandits and rogue kings and not take an army with you. Saddlers, grooms for the horses, baggage train, the lot. I’d never have done it on my own. I was a king, after all. Kings don’t travel without attendants.’

  He paused, before adding, ‘To my best recollection the gold was buried under the stable floor. By the time Jesus was a grown man gold wasn’t important to him. People were. It’s probably still there, now.’ He smiled. ‘You could go and dig it up. You’d be a rich man.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ I said, followed by a scornful laugh. ‘That’s likely to happen.’

  Mel got out and opened the boot. I followed him and collected my suitcase.

  ‘Cheerio guys. Thanks for the lift,’ I said.

  They each gave me a regal wave.

  A moment later they were on their way.

  ‘Those three kings,’ I murmured watching the tail lights go off into the darkness, ‘jokers, more like.’

  Men are by nature acquisitive beings and gold has always had a special allure. Gold. A fortune in gold. Buried somewhere in Jordan, where a stable once stood. It might be impossible to find. Then again, it might not. They’d left me with something, those three, which I knew would tantalise me, always have me wondering. Should one go, should one look, should one seek? Damn those three, theirs was a Christmas gift which would leave me frustrated for the rest of my life.